


Coda to a Nightmare

by one_windiga



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Amputation, Disability, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_windiga/pseuds/one_windiga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The world was different now. Stiles wanted it to be the same.  Things didn't work that way in the real world, did they?"</p><p> </p><p>Stiles is forced to cut Derek's arm off when Scott doesn't make it back in time.  Now he has to handle the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coda to a Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be the first to admit that amputations are a difficult subject, and not one I have a lot of experience with. I've tried to deal with it in an honest way, not pushing anyone into a box, but sometimes writers mess up things. If you know better than I about something I'm talking about, please drop me a line and I'll strive to make things better. As it is, I hope you like it.

The world was different now. Stiles wanted it to be the same.

Things didn't work that way in the real world, did they?

His dreams at night were punctuated by warm copper and a high-pitched, metallic shriek. Everything was painted red.

\---

When the Argents saw him after - after the stump had healed off, after Derek's jaw had learned a new way to clench and never let go, after Stiles had forgotten what it felt like to look at ketchup and not be sick - they had pitied him. Laughed at him.

Stiles had never thought before that Derek would ever _want_ to be hunted. He spent so much of his life hiding; he lived in an abandoned house that couldn't even stand up straight, for God's sake. The man had no real friends besides his pack, because he could barely show his face in town without fearing for his life. But now... they didn't think he was dangerous enough to hunt. They laughed at him.

Derek had been too weak, still too sick from the wolfsbane boiling his blood to really stand up for himself. But the swiftly blackening rage that coursed over his face was unmistakable, and despite the way that his limbs quivered and faltered when he tried to stand, Stiles had no doubt that murder was on his mind. His lunge for Kate weakened and dropped, and Stiles took the opportunity to grab him around the shoulders and haul him back down to a semi-crouch on the floor.

"It's okay. They're not worth it," he'd said, and it was meaningless, even though it was true. He could feel Derek's hackles rising against his chest where he was pressed up against the werewolf, skin bunching in tension. He murmured similarly useless reassurances, and the words fell helplessly like water on granite, pattering over all of the wrong, _so wrong_. When Derek growled, Stiles' ribcage vibrated in frequency, but the growl tapered slightly as he kept talking. He wasn't sure that Derek even noticed the words, but the fact that he was _there_ , that he was _talking_ , that he had human contact, and most importantly, that he _wasn't leaving_ \- maybe it helped.

The Argents left in a trail of smug cruelty, all leather and gunsmoke and silver, and Stiles had never really hated anyone before.

\---

Derek was a werewolf.

Derek was missing an arm.

Derek was still a werewolf.

\---

 

 

The first time Stiles saw Derek transform after - well, after - he nearly cried.

He told himself that getting a lump in his throat was manly. There were no tears involved. And the sun was in his eyes. Or the moon, as it were. Definitely the moon.

There were difficulties when Derek was human, of course, that was only to be expected when adjusting to this kind of thing. But Derek had two legs to walk with and another arm to hold things and his brain was still functioning, at least as much as it ever was. But as a werewolf... they were meant to run on four legs.

Derek hit the ground hard. The startled yelp was painful to hear, not that Derek looked hurt, but because he looked so _betrayed_. Stiles suspected that Derek trusted his own body more than he'd ever trusted a person since the fire. He was a werewolf; his body would always protect him, even when nobody else would. Even when everyone else lied. And here he was, rolling to catch his balance, leaves in his hair and clothes.

He stumbled back upright, trying to adjust. Stiles knew it would work. Eventually. He'd seen a three-legged greyhound race once. It'd lost its leg in a car accident, but that little guy had been just as excited to go as the other dogs. And the best part was, that damn little dog won. Looking at Derek, he wanted to say, 'I know you'll get used to it. I know you can do it,' but he knew it wouldn't come out right. He knew that he was very good at talking and very bad at saying anything important. And this was so important.

Instead, he just watched as Derek fell again.

\---

Stiles had always thought that Derek was sort of uncivilized. He realized, in retrospect, that he'd only formed this opinion because Derek only appeared in certain contexts. He showed up in burned-out, husks of buildings, or in creepily shadowed woods, or in schools turned apocalyptic by mountain lion attacks. He said little, he wore leather jackets - if he even bothered to wear a shirt - and he actually sometimes asked for _Scott's opinion_ on things. True evidence of poor life choices. He never thought he was _stupid_ , of course, but perhaps not entirely integrated into the niceties of society.

He was surprised and guilty when it occurred to him that Derek had a family once. The burned-out building once had wallpaper and knicknacks, and was filled with drawings of children tacked to fridge doors. He read books and went to high school, even college. He had friends. Friends that weren't trying to kill him half of the time. He wasn't uncivilized at all. He apparently even knew the 'work inward' rule of complicated silverware and ate with a napkin on his lap, when he could be bothered to eat something besides cup-of-noodles.

And now he couldn't use a fork and a knife at the same time.

Scott had the brilliant idea of inviting them all to a cheesy greasy spoon diner on the edge of town, one of those little dives that had formica counters and plastic pitchers of soda and cheery retro music. He thought it would help their 'pack unity' and help them all to get along. Also, to stop trying to rip each other's throats out every time something went wrong. Stiles applauded his intent, if not his execution. But now the scene was pathetic, bordering on horrifying, as the ring of werewolves sat around a booth table staring as Derek tried to cut his chicken. He had to cut with his right hand, leaving him with no way to hold the chicken still, and it went wobbling around the plate every time he tried to saw at it.

The look on Derek's face was sharp and pulled, and Stiles knew he was making a mental rule to always order finger food from now on. He suspected he was following it up with a mental rule to never eat in the presence of anyone else again. Possibly also to never, ever listen to Scott's ideas.

The puppies alternately stared at Derek or at each other, each outpacing the other in pity laced with awkward silence. Eventually, Scott, who was sitting closest to Derek, leaned in his seat with a fork and knife in either hand.

"Here, I'll get that," he said, and reached for the chicken.

Derek slammed the end of the knife down on the table hard, making all the other plates rattle. Scott's eyes went round and focused on the tip of the knife. A low snarl climbed out of Derek's mouth as his lips drew away from his teeth. Stiles glared at him as well, but being a human rather than a pointy, glowery werewolf, his glare was nowhere near as powerful and went unnoticed.

There was a long moment of silence.

"... Sorry. Never mind," Scott said hastily, and sat back in his own seat, dropping his utensils to the table.

Stiles cleared his throat. "So I heard the cafeteria's gonna start serving real pizza now. Like, in triangles. Not cardboard squares. Victory, am I right?"

His reward was an awkward laugh, but it did get the puppies talking. As the conversation began to return to normal, away from Derek, he caught Derek pass him a glance before looking away. He wasn't sure, but he thought that underneath the scowl and furrowed brow, there was gratitude in his eyes.

\---

Scott apologized almost every day. Some of the apologies were to Derek, for not arriving fast enough, for not leaving Allison’s family sooner. Some of the apologies were to Stiles, for making him do it.

Stiles didn’t talk to him for a week and a half afterwards. It had been the first time since they were nine that he’d held a silent treatment that long. Scott wilted and called and gave him sad faces. Stiles almost gave in about a hundred times, but every time he opened his mouth to accept his apology, he saw the look Derek’s face when he saw his amputated arm on the vet table, a face of pain and gritted-teeth resolution. And then he shut up again.

When he finally did break the embargo, Scott was so relieved, all smiles and laughs and arm-punching hey-buddy talk. Stiles smiled and gave him his chemistry homework to copy and pretended everything was fine.

He couldn’t lose his best friend, but he also couldn’t forgive him.

\---

Stiles was drunk.

He knew this by the way that the furniture seemed to move very inconsiderately when he tried to sit down. He managed to get onto his bed, and he and Scott were going to have words tomorrow about the relative alcohol tolerance of humans versus werewolves. He pulled out his cell phone to text him, but halfway through, his text read, 'we need totalk tmrw re werewolf tables.' And in his defense, this made sense in his head, because werewolves drank him under the table, but he was still lucid enough to realize that this was not entirely sensible to anyone that was not currently residing in his head. He deleted the text, and the screen returned to his contact list.

Robert Matthews  
Sam Downey  
Scott McCall  
Superwolf  
Tim Anderson

Superwolf was Derek. Derek used to be Growly McAngrypants, but when he leveled up to alpha, Stiles thought his entry could be upgraded, too.

After blinking blearily at the screen, he tapped to dial and pressed the phone up to his face.

"... Stiles? What did you do this time?"

"I didn't do _anything_ ," Stiles protested. "Why do you - you shouldn't think that. That should not be your first question."

Silence from the other end.

"You're drunk, aren't you."

Stiles pulled the phone off of his ear to stare at the screen before returning it. "You can't smell it from there, can you?"

"No, I can't smell it from here, but I'm not stupid."

"Right. Of course."

Derek snorted.

"No, I mean, totally not sarcasm, I mean, I know sarcasm is my mother tongue, despite my fluency in English as a second language, but totally seriously. Obviously you're not stupid, I saw that copy of _The Count of Monte Crist_ o in your creepy werewolf hideout, I notice things, I'm like Sherlock Holmes without the hat, I am _good_ at this, I _know_ you're not stupid."

"Congratulations," Derek said flatly. "You know I'm not an idiot." Stiles swore he heard surprise in there. Pleasant surprise. Somewhere beneath the thorniness. He wondered how many people never picked up on that, that Derek was surprised when someone didn't treat him like he had bricks in his head.

"Yes. You're not an idiot."

"Stiles, why did you call me. Because I can think of a few better drunk dials than me."

And Stiles didn’t even explain, he just jumped right into a ramble. Normally his rambles had at least a little prologue, a small road sign to say that the conversation had entered crazytown. It seemed that alcohol made him lose what little conversation skills he had. "I should have figured something else out. That's my job. You guys tear throats out and run on rooftops and look menacing and I _figure things out_ , that's me, the figure-things-out-er. And I cut your arm off! I should've come up with a better plan!"

The silence dragged on another minute, then Derek finally said, "You saved my life, Stiles."

"Yeah, but maybe I could have saved your life with a little less chainsaw action if I'd had five minutes to think!"

"You didn't have five minutes. I would have been dead."

Stiles made an unhappy noise and rolled on the bed to face the wall. "That doesn't help."

"It should."

It didn't. He still had nightmares. Not every night. Some nights he slept straight through, and others he still had normally horrifying dreams, like being naked in school or falling. Other nights he woke up sweating with the sense memory of a chainsaw in his hands, vibrating his bones, the pitch rising and falling as it hit bone. It was like a Russian roulette of dreams. He never knew which night he was going to fall asleep and take the bullet.

He didn't want to say that out loud. Saying it out loud made it realer, and besides, Derek had bigger problems. How could he complain about nightmares? Except it seemed that he was more drunk than he thought, because he said it without even realizing it.

Derek sighed, and this crackle was new, different. "Stiles..."

"It's okay. I just mean – “

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting Derek to say, but he certainly wasn’t expecting to be cut off with a sharp, “ _Don’t_.”

“…What?”

“Don’t.”

“Yeah, heard the word, didn’t get it.”

There was a rhythmic sound of thumping on the other end, and he realized that Derek was pacing.

“I said, don’t.”

“Got that.”

Silence.

Stiles was getting tired of this. “It’s like you’re allergic to explaining. I’m not a werewolf! You don’t get to say ‘jump’ and I say ‘how high?’ You have to explain things! Context, dude, context!”

“I mean…Don’t say you’re sorry.” Derek paused, and when he continued, it was slowly, as if the words were dragged out of him. “Everyone else, that’s all they can say. ‘We’re so sorry, Derek.’ You’re the only one that’s never - …”

It was Stiles’ turn to fall silent as that revelation struck him. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “Right. Point taken, duly noted. I’m… not sorry for cutting your arm off.” He didn’t know how Derek could take it, all his life being the big bad wolf and now suddenly having everyone try to drown him in pity. Stiles had never lost a limb, but he suspected the pity might be worse than the actual amputation. He paused, then continued. “You’re right, I saved your life, you should be totally grateful, _every day_ should be Stiles day, I have no damn reason to be sorry.”

“… Okay.”

Stiles lay there a minute, staring at the wall, at the tiny constellations of holes scarred in it from years of thumbtacks and posters in a teenage life. He ran his fingers over them, and there were no more words in his ear. He had always had a problem with wearing everything on his face, so easy to read, but he’d never had a scar like this, something that stuck with you forever, that the moment people saw it, they thought that they knew you. That you were different, and that this kind of different was important, and that it somehow gave them the right to tell you what a special little star you were. How brave you were. How tragic.

After what felt like ages, he finally spoke up again. “Derek?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re gonna be okay.”

He wasn’t sure if he could actually hear Derek holding his breath, or if that was just his imagination. He laid and waited for a reply so long that he was beginning to think that he wasn’t going to get one. Just when he’d opened his mouth to say something else, Derek replied.

“… Yeah.”

And for once in his life, he thought that maybe he’d said the right thing after all.

\---

Derek could run again.

The howls in the distance were foreign, arcing strangely against the inky night sky. Scott muttered something about another pack and territories, and then Derek’s eyes went red in his new alpha way and he took off sprinting through the woods.

A few paces in, his spine cracked and curved and his head ducked down with the silhouette Stiles had come to recognize as purely lycanthropic. He dropped down low to the ground, never stopping, and seamlessly his right hand joined his feet in bounding across the leaves. The shift was fluid, and Stiles found himself staring in awe at the change, remembering how Derek had fallen such a short time ago. But this – this was smooth, electric, current on a live wire, flowing. Stiles felt awkward in comparison, slow and bumbling and angle-clumsy. Derek could fly.

And then Derek disappeared into the dark, and the moment was gone. Stiles smiled, and when Scott cast him a confused look, he just shook his head.

\---

The room was tiny and dark and rather uncomfortable. Stiles sat on the floor with his back against the wall, watching Derek watch the door. The safe sat a few feet away, lock in place, and safe from the clutches of the vampire currently stalking the town. They just had to make it until dawn, Stiles reminded himself.

“Dude, the door isn’t going to change color if you keep staring at it.”

Derek flicked his eyes towards Stiles with a dry look without moving his head. “I’m keeping watch. Staying alert means staying protected.”

Rolling his eyes and smiling, Stiles crossed his arms behind his head. “Seriously, man, sit down. We’re fine. You’ve got the whole pack out there tracking it, and we’re here on guard duty. It’s _one vampire_.”

Now Derek turned fully to face Stiles. “You’ve obviously never fought a vampire.”

“It can’t be that bad, can it?”

Derek’s nostrils flared, and he frowned. “…You’re really not afraid.”

Stiles shook a finger at him. “No cheap werewolf moves! And no, I’m not afraid! You’re a superfast, superstrong, supersensing megawolf and I’m a damn supergenius. We’re a team of supers! We’re gonna be _fine_.”

Derek blinked, just once. Stiles used his supergenius to deduce that he was surprised. “… What?” That won him a pause until Derek looked away, back at the door. He frowned and pressed on. “ _What?_ ”

His prize this time was a snort.

Stiles counted this as progress.

“You’re being cynical again, aren’t you. You think we’re going to be horribly maimed and/or killed, don’t you.”

It was Derek’s turn to roll his eyes.

“So you’re a megawolf and I’m a supergenius and we’re going to be horribly maimed and/or killed, is that it? Yeah, that’s fantastic logic. I distinctly remember last time we were in some deadly situation you were all, ‘get behind me, squishy humans!’” Stiles finished the sentence in a low, gravely baritone that was supposed to be Derek’s voice. Derek raised his eyebrows. “You’re always in the ‘we brawny werewolves can save the day without any help from the mortal peanut gallery’ camp, and I-“

Realization struck him like a semi, leaving him staring in sudden, painful understanding.

“Oh, God. Derek…”

Derek’s eyes swiveled slowly over to him, now wary. “ _What_ ,” he said flatly.

Stiles crawled across the floor to sit next to Derek, who was looking swiftly more suspicious.

“You’re still good at protecting, you know.”

The moment the words left Stiles’ mouth, Derek’s face stiffened and went still. Stiles’ heart nearly broke.

“You _are_. You’re still growly and menacing and fang-y and even with one arm you could still rip a guy’s throat out in, like, two-point-five seconds.” Stiles has never used ‘rip a guy’s throat out’ as a compliment before. Stiles has had many firsts in the last two years. “You’re pretty much the most dangerous guy I know and, frankly, if I have to be in mortal danger, I have the best probability of _not dying_ if I’m around you! I _trust you_ , Derek!”

Derek’s eyebrows shifted in an entirely new way, knitting together in an expression that Stiles would have called ‘lost’ if it was on anyone else’s face. After a moment, he reached out with his right arm and took a fistful of Stiles’ shirt, yanking him into a fierce, hungry kiss.

Stiles was off-balance and had to brace one arm against the wall as he was half-sitting in Derek’s lap, and the wall was hard and cold and his arm was scraped to hell on the brick and his knee was trapped between Derek’s foot and the wall, and it was the _best moment of his entire life_. He shifted his hips to better settle his weight over Derek’s legs, returning the kiss fervently, and reached up to tangle his fingers in Derek’s hair.

Isaac called three hours later to say they caught the vampire.

Stiles declined the call.

 

 

_fin_


End file.
